From: dover@ll.mit.edu (David Humphrey)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting
Subject: Finally DL is done, here is some info
Date: 8 Jun 1995 16:16:23 GMT
Well, I finally have a Dragon's Lair running up to the point where I
am confident that I can successfully complete the game. Thanks to
"Blind Guy" Chris, Jim Rogers, and yes, even John Pierce at CPDIST,
for all of the input on how to jumper the boards, make the cables
and dissect the LDV1000 player (forgot... thanks to the Pioneer
Industrial division support line!)
Now, for those attempting to do the same; build a DL out of spare
parts, I want to provide some info on it; first off, the connector
from the CPU to the LDV1000 player.
The connector from the DL CPU to the disk player is composed of a ribbon
cable, a 24-pin DIP ribbon connector, and a 24-pin Centronics ribbon
connector. The #1 wire of the ribbon cable may go to the #1 pin of the
centronics connector, but then must connect to the #12 pin on the 24-
pin DIP connector. Yes, surprise me, but the cable is reversed.
LDV1000 connection DL M/B connection
(Pioneer manual description DL manual schematics)
DIO1 1 12 D0
DIO2 2 11 D1
DIO3 3 10 D2
DIO4 4 9 D3
5 8
6 7 Ready
Command Strobe 7 6 Ready (tied together)
8 5 Gnd
9 4
1 3
Status Strobe 11 2 Enter
Gnd 12 1 Gnd
DIO5 13 13 D4
DIO6 14 14 D5
DIO7 15 15 D6
DIO8 16 16 D7
Enter Signal 17 17 Int/Ext
Gnd 18 18
Gnd 19 19
Gnd 20 20
Gnd 21 21
Gnd 22 22
Gnd 23 23
Gnd 24 24 Gnd
Blind Guy writes:
"Anyway, with a disc in the player and the lid closed, power up the game and
the player. You should immediately hear 1 short beep, then after 15 seconds
you should hear another short beep. Right at the second beep is when the
player is initialized and sent the play command. You should hear the disc
start to spin up to speed (1800 RPM!) after which the laser carriage will
move to start playing the disc from the begining. 15 seconds after the
second beep will be a 3-tone beep at which time the attract sequence starts
to play (now the game is fully initialized and ready for play).
Listen closely to the player when it is initialized. If the disc spindal
cannot spin or does not spin up to speed fast enough, the player shuts down.
Also, if the carriage cannot move or cannot "find" the begining of the disc,
the player shuts down and the spindal stops. These players are really quite
reliable once they are properly cleaned and maintained. Out of seven
LDV1000's that I had, only two of them could not be made to work because of
corrosion from water on the PCB's. The player's EPROM revision sould be
"1001". The LDV1001 player came out after the LDV1000 and is identical,
but has a faster seek time (a benefit for games like Dragon's Lair).
Now onto the DL main board itself. These boards are really bullet proof.
Although I have seen several J1 sockets that were loose or bad causing
erratic laserdisc control. The "W1" jumper on the board must be OPEN to use
the LDV1000 player. Here are the dip switch setting that I use:
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SW2(A) (1=on)
1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 (0=off)
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SW1(B)
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0"
After the CPU is powered on, the display board will show some code such as
15EE in the player 2 display, and finally settle into operation where the
credits display just shows two zeros (00). About 5 sec.s after this, is
when the LDV1000 is initialized to power up. The disk will spin up, and
try to seek, as Chris describes above.
The EPROM in the LDV1000 had a label on it, something like:
Z03-1001-GYW-V2.0, so if YOU are ever in doubt about whether you have the
right control board CPU you can cross-check this. The last hint at
operation was from Jim Calore of the Star Tech Journal, he writes:
"The LDV1000 player's most likely failure during the earning life of
Dragon's Lair was the optics. The players needed frequent attention.
Cleaning the mirrors and lenses got some of 'em working. But, beyond the
simple cleaning maintenance, mirror and optic alignments were necessay.
Not particularly hard to do, but it required a jig (test shops have
'em)... without the test jig for alignment, it's impossible. For older
(age of actual running time) players, the laser diode itself simply became
too weak to operate properly..."
So after this input, you should all have an idea of whether you have an
LDV1000 that can work or not!
As far as the CPU goes, there are umpteen jumpers to add to the older
rev. boards that came out for the PR7820 that WILL modify it enough to
work with the LDV1000, (as well as modify the sound circuit). I cannot
even BEGIN to go into them as they are much too detailed, suffice it
to say, that with any style Starcom CPU and the rev. "F" DL code (four
EPROMs instead of five), you can get it to work with an LDV1000 player.
When I get my manual from Jim, I will be able to pass on a copy of the
jumpers to those of you who need the info.
To use a regular video monitor, you will need the NTSC decoder board
for the video output from the player. With a regular TV, this should
not be necessary, so consider it optional, it has no input from the
CPU board at all.
As far as the digital display from the CPU, this too is optional, as
long as you don't care to know about status output, player score, and
credits left. It would be nice to have one, and the I/F cable between
the CPU and the Status Display card is only a straight through ribbon
cable between two identical 16-pin dual-row ribbon connectors. No
inverting, no tricks....
Lastly, the power connector to the CPU. A big hassle to find, but
straight forward enough, if you can secure the proper power supply to
give you the +5, and +25 volts. Now this too is optional; the +25
volts, that is; it is only used for the sound amplification circuit.
Before I describe the pinouts, I might suggest that if you use your
television for the NTSC output for video, you might also use it for
the sound amplification by plugging the audio output from the LDV
player to the TV and using the volume control there. According to
the schematics, you may be loosing some beeps generated by the CPU,
but, I assume these would be minimal (THIS IS JUST A GUESS).
The power connector has pinouts like:
1 joystick right
2 player 1 button
3 +5
4 +5
5 joystick left
6 player 2
7 Gnd
8 Gnd
9 joystick down
10 coin 1
11 Gnd
12 Gnd
13 joystick up
14 coin 2
15 Gnd
16 left sound in
17 aux 3 (unused in DL)
18 (unused)
19 Gnd
20 left speaker out
21 aux 2 (unused in DL)
22 aux 5 (unused in DL)
23 Gnd
24 right sound in
25 aux 1 (unused in DL)
26 aux 4 (unused in DL)
27 Gnd
28 right speaker out
29 joystick action
30 +25v
31 Gnd
32 Gnd
33 coin counter out
34 +25v
35 Gnd
36 Gnd
I could have the speaker designations reversed (left to right), but
that's about all I can add. Good luck guys.
Ace
--
...........................................................................
. `now listen "mother", we are the Pros from Dover... so get me a nurse who
. can work up close without getting her teats in my way and send out for some
. breakfast. Eggs are OK, steak would be even better...'
...........................................................................
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